Sacrifice in Chess

In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece in the hopes of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent’s piece of lower value.

Any chess except the king can be sacrificed. Because players usually try to hold onto their own pieces, offering a sacrifice can come as an unpleasant surprise to one’s opponent, putting him off balance and causing much precious time to be wasted trying to calculate whether the sacrifice is sound or not and whether to accept it. Sacrificing one’s queen (the most valuable piece), or a string of pieces, adds to the surprise, and such games can be awarded brilliancy prizes.

In Abrahamic traditions, sacrifice is an act of giving up worldly possessions to serve a better purpose to God. Just as chess, God is seen as the King, which is the most important figure. The whole purpose of playing chess is to keep the king alive while attack to kill the king of the opponent.

In relationships, sacrifice can be seen as acts of giving up some characters or possessions by one party or both. This is done to serve the higher purpose, to make the relationship works.

In professional settings, sacrifice can be seen as an act of giving up some things to require a better set of skills, good connections or great opportunities. The purpose is to get into better career advancement.

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In chess, Abrahamic traditions, relationships and professional settings, the act of sacrificing revolves around the thoughts of keeping the higher purpose or the important thing works.

However, in chess, while the right kind of sacrifice might lead to better tactical positions, the wrong kind of sacrifice may be fatal. Thus, this calls for chess players to know the art of sacrifice in order to implement the sacrifice strategy in their playing. If they didn’t have the natural talent, that must be required from lessons through knowledge and training.

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These show the importance of purpose. Outlined them clear, make them your fundamental ideas, just then you can trust your intuitions.